Strong Heart Archived Blood Samples and Surveillance Datasets

This is a notice of intent to award a sole-source contract and is not a request for competitive proposals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) hereby announces its intent to award a sole source contract to Medstar Health Research Institute (Strong Heart Study Laboratory Center), Penn Medical Laboratory, 6525 Belcrest Rd., Ste. 700, Hyattsville, MD. 20782 for the acquisition of archived blood samples and surveillance datasets on American Indians. The statutory authority for this sole source acquisition is 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1) in accordance with FAR Part 6.302-1, only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy the agency requirement. The NAICS code for this acquisition is 621511, Medical Laboratories. The period of performance for this procurement is 90 days. The purpose of this procurement is to conduct a study on American Indian communities to assess exposure to toxic metals and study the association with adverse health outcomes. Conducting studies on American Indians has many unique challenges, such as cultural and anthropologic diversity, geographic dispersion, small community size, and different governing bodies and structures. Therefore, such studies are very challenging in many aspects, including numerous administrative approvals at tribal and federal levels, operational and implementation difficulties, logistics challenges, and long periods of time. The most effective approach would be acquiring archived biological specimens collected from a large number of American Indians as part of past and existing longitudinal cohort studies. To our knowledge, the MedStar Health Research Institute, that serves as the Strong Heart Study (SHS) Laboratory Center, is the only entity that holds a large number of archived biological specimens collected from over 4500 American Indians as far back as 30 years ago. In addition, it has extensive morbidity and mortality surveillance on these American Indian participant from the time of specimen collection until present. Conducting a study using SHS's archived samples and up to 30 years of surveillance data would make it possible for ATSDR to achieve the goal of studying historical exposure to contaminants and associated health outcomes in American Indian, all within a short period of time (1-2 years). Market research was conducted to find other vendors to meet our requirement, including extensive literature and internet searches on epidemiological studies on American Indian populations with potential archived specimens. None of the commercial biorepositories have a large number of whole blood samples taken from American Indians 30 years ago, nor any follow-up surveillance of the health outcomes of the participants from whom the blood samples were taken from. If other alternatives are selected, we would not be able to meet our goal of conduct a study on American Indian communities to assess past exposure to toxic metals and study association of past exposure with adverse health outcomes. Therefore, only MedStar Health Research Institute is the only vendor that can meet our specific requirements and provide a large number of archived specimens collected from American Indian participants several decades ago. As a result of this synopsis, no competitive solicitation will be posted on FedBizOpps.com. We will only issue a solicitation to the MedStar Health Research Institute. However, all responsible sources who believe they can meet these requirements, may submit their capabilities and/or qualifications to Tonya S. Justice, Contracting Officer, via email to TJustice@cdc.gov, no later than 10:00am eastern standard time on July 21, 2018. Reference solicitation number RFP #75D301-18-Q-68719 in the subject line of the email. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed action will be based on responses to this notice and is solely in the discretion of the Contracting Officer. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.